


they say the triangle is the strongest shape

by mzanthropist



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/M, Multi, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-22 03:38:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2493050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mzanthropist/pseuds/mzanthropist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity meets Oliver Queen on a Wednesday, two weeks after his return from the dead, and three years since befriending Tommy Merlyn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they say the triangle is the strongest shape

**Author's Note:**

> A series of snippets in an AU of my own making.

Oliver Queen returns from the dead (upending her world irrevocably and in more ways than one) on a Wednesday, five years after the Gambit had set sail on the Pacific.

 

Felicity’s rushing through her morning routine (she’d slept through her alarm for the second time that week), the familiar white noise of percolating coffee and chirpy news anchors floating through her kitchen. She’s blindly going through the motions, mind fretting over the finance report that’s likely waiting on her desk at that very moment and the investors meeting scheduled later that afternoon. Nevertheless, the sudden urgency and near hysteria in the anchor’s voice draw her attention, and she shifts her gaze from the half-schmeared bagel in her hand to the television screen.

 

A news caption reading “Billionaire Playboy Oliver Queen Discovered Alive in North China Sea 5 Years After Presumed Death” accompanies grainy footage of the Queen scion in all of his bearded glory being loaded into an ambulance. Her mouth slackens in shock. Within minutes (two, to be exact), her phone chimes, lighting up with Tommy’s smiling face.

 

“Oh, Tommy,” she answers, her heart heavy and full for her friend.

 

Tommy had returned from that brief trip to Hong Kong the complete opposite of how he’d left. Before he’d set off, he’d been irrepressible optimism and hope; there had been a lightness to him infectious enough to buoy her own heart. Because there had been a chance, however infinitesimal, that his best friend was alive and waiting to be brought home. But after, Tommy had been inconsolable, more defeated and resigned than she’d ever seen him. He’d refused to discuss what had happened (“I was wrong,” he’d said flatly when she’d met him at the landing strip), but she could surmise from his despondency that he had not only failed to find what he’d gone looking for, there was a near certainty he never would.

 

Pressing the phone to her ear, Felicity nibbles her lip in apprehension. As close as they are, she’s not sure what to expect from Tommy on this particular occasion. Would unbridled jubilance greet her at the other end of the line? Or should she prepare for barely controlled rage at the world for cruelly subjecting him to five years of unnecessary grief and loss, five years of his world being cast in the shadow of his friend’s absence?

 

What Felicity doesn’t expect is a broken Tommy. Her best friend, with his contagious smile and ridiculous eyebrow waggling, was built for resilience. In all the time she’s known him, he’s always been quick to rebound from misfortune, to pick himself up and dust himself off from whatever adversity had sprung in his path. And though there had been times when Tommy’s resilience had faltered, his insecurities and vulnerabilities surfacing through the cracks, she has never encountered a Tommy as shattered, as utterly wrecked with emotion as the one at her ear now.

 

His voice is hoarse. “Felicity, he –,” she hears him draw in a shaky breath (the gnaw on her lip intensifies), “he’s alive.” His voice rattles at the word, suffused with wonderment and incredulity. “They told me he was dead, that he was rotting at the bottom of the ocean.” A beat followed by bitter laughter. “I stopped looking for him because I thought there was nothing for me to find.”

 

She wonders how it feels to be rendered that hopeless, first by having the one person who embodied love and family ripped away so brutally, then by having the last flicker of optimism and possibility extinguished even more mercilessly.

 

Felicity listens helplessly as Tommy comes undone, succumbing to ragged, shuddering sobs that reverberate in her ears. Her heart clenches painfully, tears of her own well in her eyes. She doesn’t know is how long she stands there, watching the television through blurred, unfocused eyes with Tommy at her ear, bagel, coffee and work forgotten, the rest of the world far away and ceasing to be important.

 

—-

 

On the second Sunday that follows (a full week and a half since she’d last seen him), Tommy appears on the steps of her townhouse, a pizza box balancing a pint of mint chip and the entire Iron Man trilogy on Blu-ray in either hand. He smiles sheepishly in greeting.

 

Felicity ushers him in, then promptly snatches the carton of ice cream and bee-lines for the fridge. (“Stacking something meant to be frozen on top of something emitting heat is really counterproductive.”) She doesn’t voice it, but she has a sneaking suspicion that this is an apology of sorts for his absence in her life as of late. Her intuition goes on to be confirmed by the pineapples on the pizza, and later still when he admits as much.

 

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around lately,” Tommy says once she’s loaded the second of the franchise into the machine and settled back onto the couch. “It’s been a crazy couple of weeks.”

 

“That’s understating it a bit, don’t you think?” she teases, snatching the carton of ice cream from his hands. She gives a dismissive wave with her spoon. “And it’s really not that big of a deal. I wasn’t exactly dying of loneliness in your absence.”

 

“No, Felicity,” he says solemnly, shaking his head. “I’ve been caught up in this whole… thing, and I haven’t been around. That’s not fair to you.”

 

She sets the ice cream on the coffee table. “Tommy,” Felicity says softly, her hand laying over his, “your best friend just returned from the dead. Well, not literally, but close enough. I, and probably the rest of the world, would think you were certifiably insane if you decided indulging me in my Brat Pack movie marathons and passing out in food comas took priority over getting reacquainted with Oliver and helping him readjust.” She ducks under his bowed gaze to meet his eyes; she needs him to see the honesty in her words. “Right now,” she continues firmly, “your best friend needs you, and you should be there for him in whatever way you can. I don’t begrudge you that.”

 

Upturning his palm and enveloping her hand, Tommy holds her gaze. “You’re my best friend too, Felicity. And you’re just as important to me as Oliver. Please, don’t forget that.”

 

Despite never having doubted her place in his life, Felicity’s heart swells at his earnest words. She answers back with a shy smile and a squeeze to his hand. “I won’t.”

 

Later that night, as Robert Downey Jr.’s voiceover closes out the final movie and Felicity unburrows her toes from where they’re sandwiched beneath Tommy’s thighs and the cushions, Tommy says casually, “We should do dinner this Wednesday.”

 

“Oh, yeah? What’d you have in mind?” she asks, stifling a yawn.

 

“Table Salt. I’m hearing fantastic things about their salmon tartare.”

 

Felicity eyes him dubiously. “You hate raw fish,” she points out.

 

“Yeah, but you don’t.”

 

“Well, I’ve heard it’s ridiculously expensive. And as much as I’d love to join you for dinner at one of Starling’s finest, it’s not something I can afford at the moment.” She scratches her nose. “I mean, the start-up’s generating some revenue now and we’re hopeful that it’ll start turning profits soon, but until that damn balance sheet stops ending in a negative value, I don’t think fancy meals are the kind of luxury I should be indulging in.”

 

“Well, good thing you’re not paying then.”

 

“Tommy—”

 

“I know we usually go Dutch, but this is my treat.”

 

Felicity shakes her head, determined to make him see reason. But just as she’s about to launch into her rant, his lips are pulled into a pout, eyes wide and beseeching. All the reasons she’d queued up in her head die a quick and quiet death. She bristles internally; he knows she’s had a weakness for those dumb puppy dog eyes from day one and that she has zero immunity to them even after all these years.

 

Knowing her resolve has crumbled (she assumes her tell is the fierce scowl she’s throwing at him), he grins triumphantly and tugs her towards him. “Felicity Smoak, I promise you won’t regret this.”

 

She sighs. “That salmon tartare had better rock my world, Thomas Merlyn.”

 

—-

 

The following Wednesday, Felicity arrives at the restaurant a little harried and ten minutes late. There’s construction not two blocks from her townhouse, and navigating out of her neighbourhood had been an absolute nightmare. There hadn’t been a single street that wasn’t cordoned off or reduced to a single lane.

 

She graciously thanks the maître d’ who shows her to her table, and is unsurprised to find Tommy already seated and perusing the wine list. Slouched slightly in his charcoal suit and indigo dress shirt, he was the picture of carefree elegance. She smiles; she loves when Tommy’s like this, relaxed and comfortable in his own skin, not putting on an air or a show, not plagued with self-doubts and deprecations. It’s truly a sight to behold and it makes her breath catch every time.

 

“I hope you’ve got a wicked red coming my way,” Felicity says, alerting him to her presence.

 

She steps closer as his eyes lift and settle on her, his gaze leaving a trail of warmth where it roams and lingers. Before she knows it, he’s on his feet and has her pulled into a hug, murmuring, “You look beautiful.” His breath ghosts her ear, making Felicity shiver involuntarily at the sensation.

 

Soothed and disarmed by his heartbeat at her shoulder, she allows herself to wonder, not for the first time, what if. Because it’s moments like this where she can’t help but think maybe, maybe they were on the cusp of something if either one of them were bold enough to take the leap. But something invariably stops them (sometimes an interruption but most times their fear), and their relationship chugs along at a constant speed, in the same direction it always has. It’s a near perfect embodiment of inertia if she ever saw one.

 

Pulling away, she purses her lips in mock reproach. “You couldn’t even strap on a tie for me?” And just like that, they’re back to their easy, playful banter, normalcy and equilibrium restored. Felicity feels equal amounts of both relief and disappointment every time they revert to this default mode.

 

She shakes her head slightly, chasing away her thoughts. As always, she’s thinking too much (“I can practically hear the gears turning in your head, Felicity.” “At least someone’s is.”); she resolves to cure it with wine. Lots of it.

 

Twenty minutes later, Felicity’s well on her way to making good on her promise. She guzzles down her first glass (of a more than passable cabernet sauvignon) before the breadbasket arrives, effectively slowing the whirring of her brain and washing away the jumbled mess of feelings. Warm and weightless, she chats easily about the latest encryption she’s working on and laughs as Tommy recounts his near run-in with Mrs. Gallagher (his not-so-secret admirer) at the gym.

 

Felicity’s nearing the bottom of her second glass when she spots a man in grey step into the restaurant. His face turns, and she nearly chokes on her drink in recognition. The maître d’ leads him into the dining area, and Felicity’s surveys the room furtively, trying to locate Oliver Queen’s possible dining companion. She needn’t have bothered; he’s headed straight towards their table. For a fleeting moment, she entertains the notion that he might veer in a different direction at the very last second or that he’s just stopping by for a quick hello to Tommy. That too turns out to be fanciful thinking. She notices, for the first time that night, the third chair and set of tableware at their table.

 

“You never mentioned you’d invited Oliver Queen,” Felicity says resignedly, setting down her glass.

 

“I didn’t?” Tommy frowns, perplexed.

 

She shakes her head. There was no getting around it; she was going to be meeting Oliver Queen in a few short moments. She’d of course known it was an eventuality, but some notice would’ve been nice (Tommy’s flakiness was the bane of her existence some days), and she would’ve much preferred that it happen when alcohol wasn’t likely to compromise her already less than optimal brain-to-mouth filter.

 

But before Tommy can say anything else, he’s half pulled to his feet and wrapped in a one-armed hug. While they thump each other on the back and converse idly (“Sorry I’m late. Something came up last minute.” “No worries, man. Felicity and I were just catching up.”), Felicity takes the opportunity to observe the Queen heir.

 

He looks decidedly less wild than he had on her television screen, his dirty blond hair cropped close to his skull and beard reduced to a stretch of stubble across his jaw. Her eyes skim over his broad shoulders; the fit of his suit is quite snug and she tangentially wonders whether whey powder happened to be in ample supply, for whatever reason, on the island he’d been on. She (and likely the rest of Starling City) had been expecting an emaciated Tom Hanks-esque, “I’ve been living off berries” castaway, not Tarzan.

 

Felicity’s shaken out of her reverie when Tommy and Oliver both turn to her. She begins to rise out of her seat but pauses when Oliver says, “Please, no need to get up on my account,” and immediately plops back down. He extends a hand toward her with a smile that, while exuding charm and not lacking in the wattage department, is discordant with the shuttered look in his eyes. She files it away for later examination. “You must be Felicity. Tommy can’t seem to say enough about you.”

 

Felicity grasps his hand and gives a hearty pump. “All good stuff, I hope.” She shoots Tommy a meaningful look. “Otherwise, a certain photo may be circulating among our group of friends really soon.”

 

“I thought I deleted that from your phone!”

 

She rolls her eyes. “Are you sure we’re friends? Because if we were, you’d know that anything and everything that I value and could possibly be found on a data storage device gets sent to my Cloud.” She narrows her eyes in suspicion. “Speaking of which, are you still not backing up your stuff?”

 

At his sheepish shrug, she ploughs on, “How much more nagging do you need from me? You do understand that you could lose all your information if your computer crashes, right? And that it would be irretrievable, as in cannot be retrieved? I mean, what good is any of the upgrades and fortifications I’ve installed if you won’t even take measures to protect your own data?”

 

Fortunately for Tommy, her tirade is cut short by the shrill ring of his phone. Smiling in apology (and relief, Felicity notes), his hand reaches for the inside of his jacket. The smile becomes grim as he pulls it out and gazes at the screen. “Sorry, guys, but I’m going to have to take this.”

 

She nods her head in assent; in her peripheral vision, she catches Oliver doing the same. Tommy swipes a finger across the screen to accept the call. “Thomas Merlyn,” he gruffly answers, striding away towards the restaurant’s entrance.

 

“Any idea who that could be?” Oliver asks, unbuttoning his suit jacket and lowering himself into the seat adjacent to her. “I’ve never heard him refer to himself as Thomas before.”

 

Felicity skims her fingers around the lip of her wine glass. “Must be work. He’s taking some time off right now in light of… well, everything that’s happened recently, and gave explicit instructions that he not be contacted unless absolutely necessary. So either a sudden calamity has befallen Merlyn Global or some helpless colleague is about to get a serious tongue-lashing.” She shrugs one shoulder. “Either would explain his grumpy face.”

 

Oliver hums contemplatively in response. “Things really have changed while I’ve been away.” He huffs out a rueful laugh. “I never envisioned Tommy working, let alone for his father.”

 

“Five years is a long time. People change during that kind of time; if they don’t, there’s a good chance they aren’t human.”

 

Their server approaches and inquires as to Oliver’s drink preference. “I’ll just have a glass of whatever she’s having.” With a nod, the server makes quick work of plucking the bottle out of the ice bucket and pouring a generous portion into an empty glass. He quickly departs following Oliver’s murmur of appreciation.

 

Oliver turns to her, offering her another charming grin. “Still, he’s surprising me in more ways than one.”

 

“Oh?”

 

He gestures towards her and says, as if it were self-explanatory, “You.”

 

Felicity furrows her brows, uncomprehending. “I’m sorry?”

 

“Tommy has never had a female friend in his life.” Oliver explains with a chuckle. “He’s always been a firm believer and proponent of the adage ‘men and women can’t be friends’.”

 

She smirks. “He always did seem to have a special fondness for When Harry Met Sally,” she comments drolly.

 

He laughs again. “Yes. So imagine my surprise when he’s regaling me with stories of his new friend of the female persuasion. Tommy of five years ago wouldn’t have tolerated the idea of being friend-zoned by a woman, much less one as beautiful and intelligent as yourself.”

 

Felicity blushes at the compliment but shakes her head adamantly. “Tommy and I aren’t like that,” she insists, hoping there’s enough firmness in her tone to disguise the disappointment that claws at her throat again. Filter be damned, she needs more wine. “He’s been a good friend to me.”

 

“As you’ve been to him.” Oliver pauses, eyes dropping from hers to the red in his glass. On the table, his right thumb rubs restlessly at the neighbouring index and middle fingers. When his eyes lift back to her, his expression is sober, all traces of the previous moment’s easy humour and levity having vanished from his face. The shadow behind his eyes is more prominent now. Even if she had wanted to, this close and looking straight into them, she couldn’t chalk it up to the effects of the dim lighting or her overactive imagination.

 

“I’d like you to know that I’m not looking to end your friendship with Tommy. I don’t intend on swooping in and reassuming the mantle of being his best friend. You mean a lot to him, and my being back in no way means he doesn’t still need you.” His eyes implore her to understand something he’s left unspoken.

 

Felicity’s eyes narrow, something sharp and defensive flaring in her chest despite the heartfelt sincerity that had laced his words. The words tumble out acerbically and unrestrained. “Thank you so very much for so magnanimously giving me permission to continue my friendship with Tommy.” She regrets them instantly; she closes her eyes, bracing for Oliver’s reaction.

 

Oddly, and wholly unexpectedly, he chuckles. “Tommy mentioned you weren’t shy about expressing your opinions.”

 

She shakes her head remorsefully, meeting his eyes. “That’s no excuse. I’m sorry, I never should’ve snapped at you like that.”

 

“No, it did come off more imperious than I’d intended. I’d say you were completely justified in your reaction. I probably would’ve responded the same way.” His smile, for the first time that night, isn’t too wide and strained. It seems to reach his eyes and bring a light to their stormy depths. Felicity feels her cheeks pinken under his open, unguarded gaze.

 

Tearing her gaze away, she huffs out a laugh. “Good to know my anger wasn’t entirely misdirected! Although, I could just absolve us both by blaming the wine!” she jokes, evoking another huffed laugh from Oliver.

 

Slightly more serious, she adds, “And just in case you weren’t aware, there’s plenty of space on the best friend mantle for the both of us. He needs you too, Oliver, in ways different from how he needs me.”

 

An imperceptible sadness washes over him, his eyes hollowing again. “I’m different now,” he says matter-of-factly. He doesn’t elaborate, but she senses there’s more to it than that. “I’m not sure I can still be the friend to him I used to be.” His eyes fix unseeingly at a point past her shoulder. “Like you said,” he says, his voice wistful, “five years is a long time and I’ve changed too.”

 

Felicity frowns, prepared to prod him into an explanation, when Tommy returns, tucking his phone into his jacket pocket. He flashes a rueful smile at the two of them. “Sorry about that. Some idiot didn’t get the memo that I’m not to be reached for the rest of the month.” Settling into his seat and laying his napkin on his lap, he asks, “What’d I miss?”

 

A whole lot, she thinks, suppressing a frustrated sigh; Tommy’s timing is always impeccable when it’s the least convenient. The moment has officially been broken, and she watches regretfully as Oliver turns to Tommy, his demeanour reclaimed by the too-broad smile and deliberately cheerful tone. But the carefully constructed illusion is cracked for Felicity. She now sees it for what it truly is: a veneer, a mask.

 

She sips her wine, obscuring her observation behind the glass. Oliver Queen was an enigma, and he might be the most challenging puzzle she’s had to solve yet.

**Author's Note:**

> I've got other ideas for snippets and will be adding them as they get written. The sequence of events will likely be out of order as I'll write whatever inspires me at the moment.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and please drop a review if you've got the time. I love hearing back from readers!


End file.
